


Dénouement

by abvj



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: F/F, Post-Episode: s06e18 Lauren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 05:56:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10984779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abvj/pseuds/abvj
Summary: It's easier for her this way.With hindsight comes painstaking clarity.





	Dénouement

**Author's Note:**

> Posting for archiving purposes. Originally written and posted elsewhere in 2011 post 6x18, Lauren. Therefore, massive spoilers for that if you aren't up to date.

JJ lingers in the doorway.

It's not exactly her presence that unnerves Emily but rather the way she's looking at her. JJ's mouth is drawn into a thin line, but her eyes are soft and wide, full of concern and sympathy and every other emotion Emily isn't quite ready to handle. JJ's fingers curl into fists at her sides once or twice before flattening against the wrinkled fabric of her skirt – a nervous habit she’s usually better at hiding. Emily looks away, busies her hands with the contents of her suitcase and anxiously shoves a piece of hair out of her face. She's not used to the shortness yet, the way it tickles the nape of her neck and she finds herself missing the weight of it against her shoulders more often than she thought she would.

It's the little things, she's slowly figuring out. All that time and effort put into distancing herself from the people around her, into building relationships but preserving that always present wall she emits around herself. All of that effort and still, now, her team is the first thing she thinks about in the morning and the last thing she thinks about before she finally allows sleep to claim her.

"You shouldn't be here."

It's Emily who says this, of course, her voice hollow and thin, eyes on her hands as she folds and refolds what little of her life she was allowed to bring with her. It all amounts to a few sweaters and a pair of jeans, nothing that would be recognizable to anyone who is looking for her. Nothing that holds any amount of significance or sentimentality.

Tomorrow she'll dye her hair, maybe, buy new clothes, try to reinvent herself in a way that makes all of this a little more easy to swallow. It won't work. Emily knows this just as surely as she knows Ian will never stop hunting for the truth, for the answers only she can give him until the day he dies. It won’t work because things are different now than they were before. Years ago, when she breathed life into Lauren Reynolds and lost herself within the persona, Emily was only leaving behind a mother who loved her career more than her daughter and a life that carried little to no significance to anyone but her.

Today she's leaving behind the only family she ever really knew.

The guilt and regret that has consumed her entirely since the day Ian decided to stroll back into her life just as easily as he left is why the underlying mantra of her life has been, and always should be: no attachments.

Luckily for Emily she has never been known to make the same mistake twice.

"I know," JJ replies, finally, tone soft, eyes cast downward towards the floor.

JJ's fingers twitch at her sides and she takes a step, just a mere half of one, really, and stops immediately thereafter. There was a span of time - however short it may have been - where JJ would have closed the distance between them without reservation. The fact that she doesn't, that all JJ does is look at Emily as if she's looking right through her, as if to say why didn't you come to me? serves as another painful reminder of what her life once was and what it definitely isn't now.

Without thought Emily reaches as hand to her mouth, taking her thumbnail in-between her teeth and biting down. She tastes blood immediately, the bitter essence of copper staining the tip of her tongue as she tears the skin around an already thread-bare nail.

"Then why are you?" Emily asks and her voice sounds as tired as she feels and she closes her eyes at how foreign it sounds to her own ears.  
She used to be stronger than this.

Within a heartbeat JJ is next to her, tiny fingers clasping around her own and Emily jerks away at the movement, at the sudden invasion of space. JJ doesn't let go.

"You shouldn't do that anymore," JJ says quietly and Emily laughs softly and without mirth as she drops her hands to her side.

With a curt nod, Emily replies somewhat bitterly, "you're probably right."

Her sweater is cut too low, a v-neck her mother bought her for Christmas ages ago that she never would have picked out on her own, and it doesn't completely cover the jaggedly placed edges of the four-leaf clover on her chest when she moves just the right way. The redness is still present and glaring in contrast against her pale skin and with the painstaking clarity of hindsight Emily is starting to understand that place where Ian was coming from, that place that breathes for revenge and revenge alone. Emily is starting to understand because there is an ocean and a continent between her and her team, her family, and there still isn’t anything she wouldn’t do for them. She understands now what she couldn’t then and knows there isn’t anything they wouldn’t have done for her.

Emily understands that place that fuels Ian’s every move because everybody has it inside of them. Some are just better at burying it than others.

"Em," JJ breathes, her fingers reaching out without thought to trace the beginnings of Emily’s scars, of the reminders she’ll always have to carry with her, and her fingers are cold against Emily's skin. The hitch in Emily’s throat gives too much away and she shakes her head in an attempt at self-preservation as she takes a small step backwards. "I'm sor -" JJ starts, the sincerity deafening, but Emily merely shakes her head in an effort to stop the words before they fall out of JJ’s mouth.

This isn’t anybody’s fault but her own.

"Don't."

They stand there for a minute, neither moving nor saying a thing and Emily looks at the floor while JJ stands too close.

It's JJ who closes all distance between them and kisses her, her fingers unsteady against Emily's jaw, her mouth soft at the corner of Emily's lips. There's a moment, an instant where Emily thinks about pulling away, where she probably should have, but instead she tilts her head and kisses her back. Opens her mouth wider, pliantly beneath JJ's and allows herself this, this moment of weakness, this last connection to a life she may never get back.

The kiss is hurried and rushed and so hard she can feel the bite of JJ’s teeth against her own, but she does not care. It only lasts until one of them parts to draw a breath and after they are both at a loss for what to do or say, so they merely let the silence fill the void between them once more.

"You shouldn't be here," Emily finally says wearily, bottom lip between her teeth.

JJ only nods.

 

 

__

 

 

At night she'll dream of cool steel against her skin, the tip of a gun pressing into the bone of her temple without remorse. Emily will smile knowingly, the curve of her lips gentle but present and she will be unafraid when Ian pulls the trigger with his eyes on hers and his mouth coiled around a laugh.

Each morning she will wake and the remembering will be a little harder and Emily will be one step closer to convincing herself that this is reality; that this is what really happened.

Maybe she'll even believe it one day.

(It's easier for her this way.)


End file.
